Trump Bets Kavanaugh ‘Hoax’ Can Turn Into Midterm Gains

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Brett M. Kavanaugh was sworn in as a justice to the United States Supreme Court on Monday. President Trump started the ceremony with a declaration of the new justice’s innocence.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

ORLANDO, Fla. — When a bitterly divided Senate confirmed Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh despite sexual misconduct allegations a month before the midterm elections, strategists in both parties anticipated that it could turbocharge Democratic efforts to take over the House, if not all of Congress.

One person who did not get the memo? President Trump.

Rather than falling back on defense amid roiling outrage, especially among women, Mr. Trump is going on offense, trying to turn the furor into an asset instead of a liability. With the world’s loudest megaphone, he hopes to make the issue not the treatment of women in the #MeToo era but the treatment of men who deserve due process.

For Mr. Trump and his Republican allies, this is a big gamble, with control of at least one house of Congress and possibly both on the line. Polls generally show that more Americans believed Christine Blasey Ford, the main accuser, than Justice Kavanaugh. The national mood over the past year has been less forgiving of powerful men accused of taking advantage of women.

The president’s calculation, however, is that conservative voters who for most of the year have been lethargic about the congressional elections can now be motivated to turn out by anger over the Democratic attacks on Justice Kavanaugh. Liberal voters, in this view, were already animated by their opposition to Mr. Trump and likely to vote even before Justice Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault and exposing himself during drunken school parties, so Democrats have less to gain at this point.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of things happen on Nov. 6 that would not have happened before,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday before flying to Orlando to address the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “The American public has seen this charade, has seen this dishonesty by the Democrats.”

Rather than moving on to other issues, Mr. Trump made a point of showcasing his appointment of Justice Kavanaugh on Monday evening with a nationally televised swearing-in ceremony at the White House, an event unnecessary legally since he was already sworn in on Saturday but useful politically, as the president sees it.

Mr. Trump continued his combative tone at the White House ceremony, in a highly unusual departure from the usual platitudes featured at such events.

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President Trump with Justice Kavanaugh, left, and Justice Kennedy at the White House on Monday.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

“I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain you have been forced to endure,” Mr. Trump said, citing “a campaign of political and personal destruction based on lies and deception.”

Justice Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump said, had been “proven innocent.”

The president took a far different tone from Justice Kavanaugh, who noted at the ceremony that the Supreme Court “is not a partisan or political institution” and said that despite the bruising confirmation battle, he assumed his new office “with gratitude and no bitterness,” vowing “to be a force for stability and unity.”

Conservative leaders said that Mr. Trump was trying to define the battle on his terms and that part of his appeal to his political base had been his willingness to fight.

“He’s smart to step into it,” said Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, whose wife, Mercedes Schlapp, is a senior White House official. “What President Trump is realizing is that for his supporters they don’t want their leader of their movement, the head of their party to back down. Most politicians would just cower and say, ‘Boy it’s not fair, but I might have to find another nominee.’ President Trump understands that’s absolutely the opposite of what his base wants to see.”

President George Bush took another approach after the explosive confirmation fight that put Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court despite sexual harassment allegations by Anita F. Hill. Mr. Bush’s instinct was to calm the waters, and soon after the vote in 1991 he signed a modified version of a civil-rights bill that he had vetoed the year before. He did not make a point of rehashing the battle over Justice Thomas on the campaign trail in 1992.

Democrats acknowledge that the battle over Justice Kavanaugh may help select Republicans, particularly in red states that voted for Mr. Trump like North Dakota, where Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, was already struggling before voting against confirmation. But in general they said voters are more driven to the ballot box by grievance than gratitude.

“Midterm elections are always about punishment and never about reward,” said Steve Israel, a former congressman from New York and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Turnout is generated by voters who want to punish a president and his party. They don’t usually turn out because they’re happy. So ironically, Kavanaugh’s confirmation will help Democratic turnout. As he himself said, ‘What goes around comes around.’”

Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist and former White House official, said Mr. Trump had already made himself anathema to many female voters. “Injecting himself into the aftermath and making it his victory to crow about may work with his absolute base but is probably not helpful with voters who didn’t like the spectacle and therefore don’t like the president continuing the spectacle,” she said. “And there is no doubt that making it about himself will keep his opponents equally, if not more, energized than his base.”

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Without offering evidence, President Trump said Democrats set up Justice Brett Kavanaugh and, in reference to the multiple sexual assault accusations leveled against the newest member of the Supreme Court, said that he “did nothing wrong.”CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Mr. Trump went further on Monday than he has before in dismissing the sexual misconduct allegations against Justice Kavanaugh as the creation of political opponents, calling them “a hoax” and “fabricated.” Last week, he mocked Dr. Blasey for gaps in her memory but did not suggest that her account was invented.

Mr. Trump made his comments in response to a reporter’s question about House Democrats who have talked about impeaching Justice Kavanaugh after the midterm elections. “So I’ve been hearing that now they’re thinking about impeaching a brilliant jurist, a man that did nothing wrong, a man that was caught up in a hoax that was set up by the Democrats, using the Democrats’ lawyers, and now they want to impeach him,” Mr. Trump said.

The president said that would be “an insult to the American people” and that voters had come to the conclusion that the case against Justice Kavanaugh was a fraud. Citing a woman who said she attended high school parties where women were sexually assaulted, Mr. Trump said, “It was all made up, it was fabricated and it’s a disgrace.”

When he boasted about Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation later in the day to the police chiefs in Orlando, they applauded enthusiastically. The president extolled Justice Kavanaugh’s education and career and said he had told his nominee that “this is going to be a piece of cake getting you confirmed,” then smiled at the misguided prediction.

“It was very unfair what happened to him,” Mr. Trump went on. “False charges, false accusations. Horrible statements that were totally untrue.” He added: “It was a disgraceful situation brought about by people who are evil. And he toughed it out. We all toughed it out together.”

Dr. Blasey, 51, a psychology professor in California, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that during a small high school party in the early 1980s, a drunken Mr. Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her, tried to take off her clothes and covered her mouth when she screamed. Deborah Ramirez, 53, a Yale University classmate, told the F.B.I. that he exposed his genitals to her during a dormitory party. Justice Kavanaugh, 53, denied the allegations.

Polls have suggested that the main divide over Justice Kavanaugh is partisan rather than gender: Republican women believe him almost as much as Republican men do, while Democratic men believe the accusers almost as much as Democratic women. The real gender divide comes among independents, where men are more likely to side with the justice and women with Dr. Blasey and Ms. Ramirez.

“Trump was already turning out Democrats at record numbers,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. “Anyone who strongly opposes Kavanaugh was almost certainly not going to be voting Republican in November anyways. The big unknown is if Kavanaugh will turn out Republicans in November in a way that Trump couldn’t do on his own.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Gambles That He Can Turn Kavanaugh ‘Hoax’ Into Midterm Plus. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe